Taking inspiration from birdwatchers this blog will be a record of every unique game I play during 2014. I will provide an overview of each game with my experiences or thoughts about the game. Additionally I will be tagging with labels shown on the left hand side for easy searching of game types.
On a grander scale I hope to inspire others to attempt their big year and experience the joy of gaming!

Sunday, November 16, 2014

132) Praetor

An interesting game, which upon first glance appears to be amazing and everything I want in a game. In this game you're using your workers (dice) to gather resources and money by placing them on buildings. Additionally, you can purchase new buildings and build wall segments, again using your workers and the resources you've collected. Many of these actions result in points and whomever manages to get the most points by the end of the game wins.

Just starting our 3-player game

Building and activating buildings

Individual player board

End game buildings

After playing, no one was sure exactly how they felt about the game. We loved the mechanics and what your actually trying to accomplish in the game. We really had questions about how balanced the game is. Since printing there have been some official rule changes due to broken or overpowered buildings, but this only adds to my questions of how easy it is to break this game. Without playing a few more times I'm not sure how to address this potentially huge issue. But what I can say is the thing I disliked the most about the game is that it reward players for being last to the extent that a strategy could be to do poorly for the first half of the game...ugh. The thing I liked the most about the game is that you never roll the dice. The dice are actually used to show the age/experience of your workers and eventually the end up retiring, which is a great mechanic. That said, the jury is still out on this game so approach at your own risk.